bapoumba's blog

Zotero : a browser based reference manager

I’ve always struggled to manage all my bibliography and citations, either for work (I’m a Biologist) or for Linux resources. Proprietary softwares are expensive, open source applications have limitations. As a result, I was not using anything particular, from real papers in boxes to browser bookmarks and text files full of references. Quite a pain, totally useless. This morning, a colleague pointed Zotero at me. And now I’m happy :)

Zotero is a firefox extension (also available for Netscape and Flock) working on Linux, Mac and Windows. The citations can be used offline. When browsing a page where Zotero can get the citation data, a little icon appears in the url field:

Most important, Zotero can export a bibliography to OpenOffice.org. On gutsy, no problem installing and testing the OpenOffice extension.
You can choose a standard formating style for the citations, and a custom style is in development. Sooooo nice for a scientist (for other people as well, but I cannot tell from experience)!

You have to have firefox open so that Zotero runs to create the bibliography in OpenOffice. So far, this is the only small limitation I see. As I said, I’m happy :)